Add to which, that the religious systems of those times, however ill
supported by evidence, had been long established. The ancient religion
of a country has always many votaries, and sometimes not the fewer,
because its origin is hidden in remoteness and obscurity. Men have a
natural veneration for antiquity, especially in matters of religion.
What Tacitus says of the Jewish was more applicable to the heathen
establishment: "Hi ritus, quoquo modo inducti, antiquitate defenduntur."
It was also a splendid and sumptuous worship. It had its priesthood, its
endowments, its temples. Statuary, painting, architecture, and music,
contributed their effect to its ornament and magnificence. It abounded
in festival shows and solemnities, to which the common people are
greatly addicted, and which were of a nature to engage them much more
than anything of that sort among us. These things would retain great
numbers on its side by the fascination of spectacle and pomp, as well as
interest many in its preservation by the advantage which they drew from
it. "It was moreover interwoven," as Mr. Gibbon rightly represents it,
"with every circumstance of business or pleasure, of public or private
life, with all the offices and amusements of society." On the due
celebration also of its rites, the people were taught to believe, and
did believe, that the prosperity of their country in a great measure
depended.

I am willing to accept the account of the matter which is given by Mr.
Gibbon: "The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world
were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosopher as
equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful:" and I would ask
from which of these three classes of men were the Christian missionaries
to look for protection or impunity? Could they expect it from the
people, "whose acknowledged confidence in the public religion" they
subverted from its foundation? From the philosopher, who, "considering